Artur Pizarro, Chopin Sonatas (plus): High Romantic Chopin,
Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 07/01/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I agree with the other Amazon reviewer that this album of Chopin sonatas (plus an exquisitely played early Opus 12 Variations brillantes and the Opus 60 Barcarolle) is under-rated. I give five stars, no hesitations. The high rating is just how good I hear it. What do I hear on this sonatas (plus) disc?
Let's start with piano sound. The engineers seem to have done themselves proud, so far as piano sound quality goes. This high resolution super audio disc serves the pianist well, as much as the instrument and the venue. Given that Pizarro basically has a big, big, big sound as a player - capturing his sound cannot have been all that easy to do. Too close in - to get the fine grained physical features of his touch and phrasing and so forth - and you are risking that the keyboard resonance will go all hard and edgy and mean and evil in the loudest passages. Those loud passages are a challenge, too, given the roar and sweep of Pizarro's stylistic Late Romantic frames, set around all of this Chopin. Perhaps the label is being very wise to offer Pizarro SACD, since the greater warmth and dynamic range made possible are an effective match for Pizarro.
His Late Romantic frame starts with relaxed tempos. Pizarro has the courage to take his time, even though he clearly has the fire-burning keyboard chops to clock and out-clock his own times if he wanted to rush as fast as possible from one end of the keyboard to the other, and back again, and back yet again. Pizarro also likes rubato - timed, breathing and flexible. He steals from one moment in the frame, while giving back in another moment. All mainly to let the Chopin phrase sing. And - a wonderful use of slowing down - to let the harmonics catch all colors of fire, just pulsing and glowing intensely. Just as few opera lovers would want a forced, artificial contest choice between, say, Maria Callas and Beverly Sills or Joan Sutherland or Marilyn Horne; so Chopin players of palpable merit have their own personal ways with rubato. That other Artur, Rubinstein, got praise and decades of love from audiences for adopting the most subtle and classically poised rubato possible. Pizarro, a later Artur, obviously hears his Chopin differently - farther out on the rubato possibilities. Yet his Bel Canto singing line and flexible shapes respect the rock solid basic tempos he adopts.
One fine demonstration of his art is the slow, funeral march movement of the second piano sonata. The other reviewer hears this is a boring. I do not, not at all. How? Well, for one thing, Pizarro sets a marked slow tempo from the first note - but my ears still hear a deliberate musical flow going on. Now, my listening has been tutored for better or for worse by the likes of listening for decades to prized performances by, for example, Otto Klemperer and Kurt Sanderling and Gunter Wand. These were old school conductors who often seemed to set slower tempos than their contemporaries; and earned a slow but deep burning musical renown for being able to do something with a more deliberate tempo that made the venture worth while.
To my ears, that is what Pizarro does in the slow funeral movement of the second sonata. Yes, his tempo frame is deliberate, indeed; yes, he still has the river flowing. The magic to my ears is partly the rock solid, treading bass that marks out the fundamental tempo; I can readily hear that bass tread as a Late Romantic manner of suggesting who is bearing down on us all. That is, a canny Chopin-esque musical image of the great funereal figure (Death), marching inexorably right towards all of us, sooner or later. Part of what I hear that lets it work in Pizarro's hands is mainly down to his big, big, big tone. I do not mean loud playing. I mean, big, tone. Given the wise and expressive capacities Pizarro can use to inflect that big tone in the service of his overall musical conceptions; I hear that he can probably get away with adopting more relaxed tempos than could some other players who simply have a different physical essence to their own characteristic touch on the keyboard. Another part of this success seems to be that Pizarro has thought about his playing, and tries to select instruments which best match his given strong points. Would that all players were so conscientious, matching their physical and musical temperaments to the instruments so intently. (That all recording engineers were as careful to find just those sweet spots in the venue that will better capture that match, so well thought through.)
My particular hearing tells me that I can take Pizarro, and value his playing, satisfied with its own musical terms. I can sit through Klemperer or Sanderling or Wand laying out a Bruckner symphony in the grand, Late Romantic manner; I now discover that I can enjoy paying similar homage to Chopin. Besides, it is not as if Pizarro simply plays Chopin very slowly, and that is that is that. No. Pizarro lets plenty of wit and drama and singing line play out, inside those slowed down tempos. This is high-calorie Chopin no doubt, not at all musical Lean Cuisine. Everybody does not need to play Chopin this way; but Pizarro can, so far as I hear it. (Nor do I think Pizarro is absolutely perfect: His second sonata Presto is well done, but I still do not hear that creepy wind blowing across our graves that is supposed to be the narrative literary image of the music. Well. Almost nobody on recordings does that for me.)
Nor do I hear Pizarro's rubato or phrasing as all that eccentric. On recordings, French player Samson Francois or Russian player Shura Cherkassy were much farther out, in their Chopin manners. Compared to either of them, Pizarro readings of Chopin simply sound much less extreme. And, rather like Francois in a way, Pizarro can integrate his sense of rubato and line with his larger musical concept of a piece; so that he sounds less forced to be eccentric by his own musical heat-of-the-moment perceptions, especially if compared to Cherkassy and other way out Chopin-istes.
What the other reviewer hears as Also Ran, ordinary readings of the third sonatas inner movements, I hear as a contrasting return to some of the classical, Golden-Meaned, Apollonian poise we associate with Rubinstein in Chopin. That is, to my ears, Pizarro shows he has it all, even the Rubinstein touches when he needs or wants them in this music. Then that third sonata Finale - just listen to it.
Nor do I find the Barcarolle wanting. His reading is closer to Rubinstein than to Francois or Cherkassy or Magaloff, and so what? The point is, Pizarro playing it simple and direct is just as viable as not. I hear nothing boring in either Rubinstein's or in Pizarro's poise, as recorded.
If I stretch out to find apt comparisons, the pianist that comes to mind as a temperamental relative of Pizarro is probably that great, dark house Hungarian (settled expatriot in the USA, finally in San Francisco), Ervin Nireghazy. They both knew and loved - and could carry off - this sort of Late Romantic, Grand, Big Sky style. I do not mind at all that Pizarro can sometimes take musical risks; to my ears, it pays off handsomely. More to the point: I simply do not hear Pizarro as suffering from the unformed, unfocused, opaque music-making of which some critics have accused him in their reviews.
Just listen to the encroaching bass tread of that second sonata funeral march movement; or to a second Chopin disc, sitting right through the Second Scherzo that wraps up that disc; then try to tell me that Pizarro has gone all rhythmically slack. Gee. Hardly, folks. Pizarro's rubato and phrasing have dash, point, and sparkles of gem-like fire - to my ears at least.
I am up for this Chopin playing, then. Any day of any week. Pizarro goes right to those fav shelves that already include Rubinstein, Moravec, Benedetti Michelangeli, Francois, Murray Perahia, Arrau, Kissin, Earl Wild, Horowitz, Garrick Ohlsson, Maria Tipo, and Juana Zayas. Five stars, if not ten or fifteen stars. I think Pizarro will surely be welcome, an enduring add to the Chopin lists."
